In defence of the alterfactual in historical analysis Darlington, RR Title In defence of the alterfactual in historical analysis Authors Darlington, RR Type Article URL This version is available at: http://usir.salford.ac.uk/id/eprint/10094/ Published Date 2006 USIR is a digital collection of the research output of the University of Salford. Where copyright permits, full text material held in the repository is made freely available online and can be read, downloaded and copied for non-commercial private study or research purposes. Please check the manuscript for any further copyright restrictions. For more information, including our policy and submission procedure, please contact the Repository Team at:
[email protected]. In Defence of the Alterfactual in Historical Analysis In recent years a small number of so-called ‘counterfactual’ or ‘what-if’ historical books, which ask us to imagine what would have happened if events in the past had turned out differently than they did, have been published. They have stimulated an important, albeit not entirely new, methodological debate about issues and questions which are (or should be) of central relevance to the work of socialist historians, and which such historians need to engage with and contribute towards. This brief discussion article attempts to do this by presenting one particular Marxist viewpoint, with the hope and expectation others (hopefully supportive but possibly critical of the argument presented here) will follow. In the process, it examines the past use (and abuse) of the counterfactual within historical analysis, presents an argument for the validity of a refined and renamed ‘alterfactual’ approach, and examines the use of such an alterfactual approach to the British miners’ strike of 1984-5.